Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 245

Queen of the Crapsellers

Flashing back now to April 12, when we came booming up from Bodrum to our base at Selcuk, on the way looking at places like Eurotas and Herakleia, then going in search of Apollo's temple at Didyma. Signage sent us astray. It turns out that Didyma is not precisely exactly quite the same city as the modern Turkish Didim, which is an overdeveloped seaside resort community. We drove through this

Cybugs

Okay, cool new DARPA thing . . . The military and spy world no doubt would love tiny, live camera-wielding versions of Predator drones that could fly undetected into places where no human could ever go to snoop on the enemy. Developing such robots has proven a challenge so far, with one major hurdle being inventing an energy source for the droids that is both low weight and high power. Still,

From Junkfood Science

I suppose we all remember the big story about how rhesus monkeys kept on a highly-restrictive diet lived longer than those who were allowed to nosh at will. Turns out that this is only true if you, well, ignore the monkeys that died. The lower mortality claimed among the monkeys on the calorie restricted diet were achieved only after eliminating 37% of the monkey deaths. They defined mortality

Mr. Brown

Charles N Brown of Locus died today.Charles was one of those science fiction people who will be very difficult to explain to future generations, a combination of gruff titan and mischievous elf. He began Locus as a one-page mimeographed newszine to support a worldcon bid, and then built it over the years into the premiere--- possibly only surviving--- print news magazine of the science fiction

Meet Mr Fusion

DARPA's attempt to produce a microchip-sized fusion reactor has dropped out of the budget. Chip-scale integration offers precise, micro actuators and high electric field generation at modest power levels that will enable several order of magnitude decreases in the volume needed to accelerate the ions. Furthermore, thermal isolation techniques will enable high efficiency beam to power converters,

Gaston's Phantom

I've seen most film adaptations of Phantom of the Opera, including the one in Chinese where the singer was a guy (The Phantom Lover, 1995), and I've seen no less than two musical theater adaptations, both of which sucked. So when I saw the original 1911 book by Gaston Leroux at the library, I picked it up out of curiosity. And d'you know what?All the adaptations are better than the original.

Now At Popular Prices!

Implied Spaces is now available in mass-market paperback!Y'all probably knew this already, but I didn't. I'm just the author.And, because I haven't nagged you for a while, I'll mention that you can pick up a copy of This Is Not a Game at the same time.

Kicking George

This weekend features the anniversary of the day we officially decided to kick King George out of town. In a decision largely unrelated to King George, Kathy and I are going to secluded mountaintop retreat for three nights.There may be internet. There may not be. There may be internet but I may not decide to make use of it. Which is by way of saying, I'll probably check you all next week.

Them!

A giant ant colony has taken over the world!The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination. What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents

Unique Opportunity

The writer Ian McDowell needs y'all's help. His father, who has just lost a leg, needs to move out of his apartment, where the manager refuses to install modifications to aid the handicapped. (This is legal, apparently.)Ian is raising money by offering a unique item for sale on eBay, a one-of-a-kind hand-written collection featuring original, never-published stories by Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link,